


Of Bodies

by 22to22



Category: Warframe
Genre: Drabbles, Gen, nonbinary tenno, spoilers for second dream, spoilers for the limbo theorem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-31
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-08-12 02:30:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7916926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/22to22/pseuds/22to22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four drabbles written after finishing The Second Dream, so major spoilers ahoy; please don't read if you haven't finished it! Honestly, it's not worth getting spoilt for, since there's no real plot here, just navelgazing in space.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Bodies

4.

Dante dreams of the bright, clean golden lines of the Void in the shadowless house where xe grew up.  Xe sleeps for days and days in the metal body of xir Cephalon, recording the time in rotations of a planet xe was too young to call home.  Not long ago, xe slumbered for eons hidden in the void, the void buried within a mighty tree; and when Vor had woken xir there, xe slept on for many more years hidden in a forgotten moon, the moon hidden within the void.  So it was that Dante's home was Earth, and the Orokin Void, and Lua, and Ordis, and most of all in dreams(though, of them all, Ordis is the most talkative).

By the time Dante saw xir Operator fall from its casing, xe had worn no less than eighteen different faces across the solar system, changing arms and legs wholesale on a whim.  A whole gallery of xir ship was dedicated to a variety of different heads on display.  In fact, xe had switched frames three times just to get to the inner chamber on Lua, and the warframe that made the journey was Equinox, who flowed effortlessly across the spectrum of two bodies made one.  It did not come as a surprise to xem that the warframes were not xir truest form.

(The broken blade had torn through Equinox's day-form, and both the night-form and their metamorphosis now carry scars in sympathy.  The other frames remain blissfully oblivious.)

Dante is reminded--staring at Equinox, staring at Operator, crumpling as xe crumpled--of the flickers of light and heat xe feels as the warframes sleep(deactivated, as Ordis would say), twitching like xir kubrow as they chase Corpus and Grineer.  Those dreams are not Dante's, and xe leaves them well enough alone, but it is hard to avoid eavesdropping when living in such close proximity.  They dream of other things; processes more technical than xe can follow, the harsh whisper of the Stalker come to kill xir youngest(a nightmare xe shares), and glimpses of a terrible violence, erased save for the ache of muscle memory.

Sometimes, they dream of Dante; it's this xe thinks of, crawling to Equinox's side.

Ultimately, xe was disappointed to learn xyr heart was confined to one, irreplacable body. Xe had been working under the assumption that xe could be duplicated, or saved in backup across a dozen clones like the Grineer, or in tight clusters of metal like the Cephalons.  To this point, disarmament only meant pain.  Xe couldn't be as reckless, now that xe had learned mortality; xe must take care to not learn death as well.

(Dante wonders what xe will wake up to, when xe has run out of bodies.)

 

3.

The Lotus speaks often of the purpose the Tenno carry, a great responsibility owed to the goodness of the system to keep it safe from the Lotus's enemies, who number many and myriad.  Dante has never met the goodness of the system, and no longer takes it on faith that the civilians the Lotus bids xem to protect are anything more ideologically pure than any other valuable asset.  But Dante goes, and cuts down Grineer and Corpus and Infested and Corrupted with the same jubilant blade, just as she asks.

The Grineer howl with the same voices as their siblings; Valkyr's trauma is identical in every warframe built from Zanuka's corpse.  Limbo dances in and out of the void with as much irreverence as her predecessor, who drifts in pieces between realities.  A Grineer butcher will always push his way to the front line.  Everything is inherited, and nothing is learned.

Driven by the bottom line, the Corpus stripmine entire planets.  Dante returns often to haunt Sargas Ruk, dragging components out of his cooling corpse again and again.  He calls the Tenno honorless pirates, blades for hire, here to steal the hard-earned toils of the rightful Grineer.  These taunts are meant to sting, but it doesn't hurt the tool to call the spade a spade.

Phorid is a beautiful beast, a meter and a half taller at the shoulder than xir biggest warframe.  Phorid speaks to xem in deep gutteral screams, communicating to something in the pit of xir stomach that hums exactly Phorid's meaning with a clarity beyond words.  They are eternal.  They are unified.  They are of many bodies, and seek to be many more.  They seek to be Dante.  Dante is a good hunter and dedicated to xir work, and so xir blade always finds the killing blow; but xe would be lying if xe said, in xyr heart of hearts, that xe did not long to accept Phorid's offer.

The Orokin relics bathe everyone in the same piercing golden light.  Infested, Grineer, Corpus, all elevated and purified beyond their station, robbed of their shadows and their secrets.  Its own children are long gone, and the Tenno who grew up in the void's hallowed halls did not stay--stolen by the Lotus, or by Vor, or by their own will--so the children it cannot create, it takes for its own.  The hard light that spills from open mouths, the huge and fruitless white trees that gnarl and pull apart hapless ruins, the secret treasures and traps and puzzles designed to intrigue and ensnare; all of these are a home Dante cannot return to.

The Lotus, mighty and wise mother of all Tenno, is governed by fear.  She rules by hoarding secrets and stamping out technological advancements.  Dante respects this for what it is.  She wants to protect her family, and she thinks that, by doing so, she will make the system a better place.  Well, she would know better than xem. After all, her wisdom is informed by memories of a war that Dante can only feel as a phantom limb.

At the end of the day, even the Lotus will bend her morals and send her Tenno to aid the Corpus, or the Grineer, when it suits her to do so.  If there is such a thing as honor in the universe, Dante will not learn it from her.

 

2.

Before discovering xir Operator, xe didn't have a name.  Xe was only a colorful, ever-changing vessel cutting a joyful swath of blood and steel across the system. But, with the discovery of xir core came the need for a name, some common thread to tie together a past and a future; an identity, and a context within it.

This worries xem.  If you can give something a name, you can know it; if you know it, you can kill it.

Xe is not fond of this prospect.

 

1.

Dante dreams of a warm hand enveloping xirs, of long dark hair and a worried brow above xem.  Xe dreams of xyr siblings in the void, of food and exhaustion and a longing to be known by someone in ways it is not possible for them to learn.  Xe dreams of the golden light, and the long dark, and the empty wound.

Ordis is there to greet xem when Dante wakes.


End file.
